User talk:Snoutholder

Welcome!

Hello,, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~&#126;); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place  on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! &mdash; Kimchi.sg | Talk 00:21, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
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Motivations for Contributing to Online Communities
Is your article Motivations for Contributing to Online Communities copied entirely from the references you cited? That would make it a copyright violation. I have listed it at Copyright problems.

Please do not post material word-for-word from books or other copyrighted material. &mdash; Kimchi.sg | Talk 00:34, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Only those passages in quotes are copied directly from the books so 90% of the article was written by myself. I felt I needed some quotes to back up what I was saying. I don't think it is a copyright violation because:
 * Again, very little was pulled directly from the book and I gave credit to the author(s) when I cited them.
 * The material I referenced from the book was not the main/central argument of the book so I did not supplant or significantly extend their work (should be fair use). The books I cited were about online communities in general, not specifically about motivations for online contribution. One of the books did dedicate a chapter to motivations but it still was only a small subset of the book material.

If it would help, I can pull the quotes and rewrite them in my own words but give my resources credit for the general arguments I used from them.

Removed Cospire links
Please do not add commercial links (or links to your own private websites) to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising or a mere collection of external links. You are, however, encouraged to add content instead of links to the encyclopedia. See the welcome page to learn more. Thanks.
 * I just removed your links to Cospire from, I think, six pages. I'm sure you'll be unhappy about that, and I'm sorry about it, but Wikipedia is not the place to promote things. I'm sure it's a worthy product, but it has to be of demonstrated notability before it deserves an article. I would suggest taking a look at the links above before you go any further with this campaign. Since the site hasn't even launched, I think WP:NOT is also relevant. I wish you luck--I hope the project becomes well-known and someone else writes up an article about it, but what you're trying to do just isn't what Wikipedia is for.  &middot; rodii &middot;  20:12, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi--Thanks forthe response. I actually agree with just about everything you say, and appreciate your keeping it civil. "Vanispamcruftisement" is a big problem here. When I went to those pages and saw the huge numbers of redlinks, I was... displeased, I guess. So I put them on my to-do list. Your links and article just happened to be my way in to them, so I went at it first. Wikipedia's recent prominence has made it a desirable target for anyone who wants to promote a site--whether we call them "spammers" or, in your case, just someone with something to get the word out about. The difference is that you were open about what you were doing--too many people try to hide their links.

When it comes down to it, though, we have to follow the notability guidelines, and your site--and I was just going by your "May 2006" launch date with my crystal ball comment, by the way--just is too new to be notable. We're still struggling with defining what notability means for companies (WP:CORP) and websites (WP:WEB), but for now those are the best guidelines we have. All the other non-notable sites with PR-type articles really need to be pulled, I agree. If we start saying "well, that guy has an article so I get one too" you can quickly get in a race to the bottom scenario--that way lies a thousand Pokemon articles. :)

So... it's a valid concern, I hear you and I don't have an easy answer. From your standpoint, you're being denied access to a valuable resource; from Wikipedia's, we're drowning in commercial links. All I can say is that I was sincere when I said that I hope your product succeeds and gets a real article here soon.  &middot; rodii &middot;  23:20, 25 April 2006 (UTC)